Precision engineering firm Renishaw is to cut 440 jobs worldwide. The Gloucestershire-based firm said that 308 of the losses would be in the county, with another 12 at risk at other sites across the country. A spokesman for the company, which is known for its measuring equipment, said that sales had been affected by the fall in demand for capital goods in sectors such as carmaking.

Renishaw's founder and chief executive, Sir David McMurtry, said redundancy was a "distressing process for everyone involved" but that earlier attempts at combating the recession, including pay cuts and a four-day week at the Wotton-under-Edge plant, had not been enough to avoid redundancies.

The firm hopes to re-employ some staff at a later date and is maintaining a worker database.

It employs 2,240 people around the world, with most of its 1,500 UK staff based at four sites in Gloucestershire. The firm also has small facilities in Castle Donington, Exeter, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Redundancy figures for those sites have yet to be confirmed.

Economic decline has eased in Scotland but a recovery is still out of sight, according to a monthly survey of businesses.

More than 600 firms in Scotland suggested that March had seen an easing in the rate of decline in new orders, with fewer jobs being shed and cost inflation at its weakest since 2002. RBS, which carried out the survey, warned that the figures nonetheless remained close to historic lows.

British workers will receive some of the lowest pay rises in the world, according to new research published today. The research said that companies in the UK were being hit harder in the recession than most, resulting in pay rises of less than 1.5%.

The figure puts the UK behind all but six of the 88 countries included in the study, with UK staff only faring better on pay than those in Hong Kong, Slovakia and Portugal (1.2%), Ireland (0.8%), Latvia (0.67%) and Singapore (0.22%).

The research, carried out by Hay Group, also showed that there had been a significant increase in companies freezing salaries, at 38% compared with just under 20% last November.

More than a third of UK companies were cutting jobs, compared with just over one in four globally.